One of my long-held beliefs is that evolutionary biology should be taught extensively in schools. There may be some objections from religious fundamentalists, but these are silly. Evolution does not tell you anything about whether or not God exists; it simply proves that, if he does exist, he really hates top-down central planning.
In any case, it would pay to teach evolution in schools even if evolution were not true — for the simple reason that by understanding evolutionary mechanisms, you are gifted with an entirely new way of looking at the world. In the words of the computer scientist Alan Kay: ‘a change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points.’
Like cryptic crosswords and detective fiction, which I also recommend for the brain, evolutionary thinking trains you to look beyond the obvious surface explanation (‘It’s an open and shut case,’ said Inspector Lestrade) to the alternative readings hidden beneath. As such it pays off twice: it aids creative problem solving and it makes you less dogmatic, because you come to recognise that the same problem can have more than one possible solution, and that, in this system, failure is not a bug but a feature.
Many just miss the decisive moment.
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